DAYABBRLEN

The DAYABBRLEN option specifies the number of characters to use for abbreviations of day names that are stored in the DAYNAMES option. You can specify how many characters to use for abbreviating particular day names when you specify the <WT>, <WTXT>, and <WTXTL> formats with the DATEFORMAT text option.

Data Type

TEXT

Syntax

DAYABBRLEN = specification [;|, specification]...

where specification is a text expression that has the following form:

startpos [- endpos] : length

You can define many different groups of days, each with different abbreviation lengths. When you do so, separate the groups with a comma or a semicolon as shown in the syntax.

Parameters

startpos [- endpos]

Numbers that represent the first and last days whose abbreviation length is defined by length. These numeric positions apply to the corresponding lines of text in the DAYNAMES option. You can specify these ranges of values in reverse order, endpos [-startpos], when you prefer.

The DAYNAMES option can have more than seven lines, so you can specify startpos and endpos greater than seven in the setting of DAYABBRLEN. When you specify a range where neither startpos nor endpos has a corresponding text value in the DAYNAMES option, then Oracle OLAP has no text values to abbreviate for that range. When you later change your day names list so that startpos is valid, the specified abbreviation is applied.

length

A number that specifies the length in characters (not bytes) of abbreviated day names. When you do not specify an abbreviation length for a given position in the DAYNAMES option, or when you explicitly set a given position to zero, Oracle OLAP uses the default abbreviations of one character for <WT> and three characters for <WTXT> and <WTXTL>. Oracle OLAP never uses abbreviations when you have designated the full name specifications <WTEXT> and <WTEXTL>.

Usage Notes

Ambiguous Day Names

You can use DAYABBRLEN to interpret ambiguous names, for example, whether 'T' stands for Tuesday or Thursday. When the DAYABBRLEN for Tuesday was 1 and for Thursday was 2, then 'T' would always match Tuesday, and it would require at least 'Th' to match Thursday. This interpretation does not depend on the order of Tuesday and Thursday in the week; it would work the same way when the two days were reversed. If, on the other hand, the DAYABBRLEN for each of these was 2, then 'T' would not match either one, and you would have to enter at least 'Tu' or 'Th' to get a match.

Examples

Example 5-16 Specifying Day Abbreviations

The following DAYABBRLEN setting specifies that the first five days of the week are abbreviated with one character and the last two days are abbreviated with two characters.

DAYABBRLEN = '1-5:1, 6-7:2'
DATEFORMAT = '<WTXT> <MTXT> <D>, <YYYY>'
SHOW CONVERT ('2 august 2005' DATE)

These statements product the following result, with Tuesday abbreviated to one character.

T AUGUST 2, 2005